DESIGN + COMMUNICATIONS
Intro to design thinking
The following is a selection from an academic lecture I wrote as a part of my course design work for Bay Path University. This selection comes from the first module of a six-week course titled Introduction to Design Thinking.
This course introduces students to foundational principles of design thinking as a tool for innovative problem-solving and strategy development across industries. Students will learn about different methodologies for developing and applying empathy-based solutions to user and stakeholder challenges. Students will engage in exercises and projects in which they model the different steps of design thinking, including: identifying user challenges, conducting empathy fieldwork, brainstorming user-centered solutions based on qualitative and quantitative data, creating prototype concepts, and role-playing end-user testing.
Client
Bay Path University
Collaborators
n/a
Year
2021
Services
course design, writing
Design Thinking (Library Futures) - CH 1: Understanding Design Thinking
Author and librarian Rachel Ivy Clarke gives a comprehensive overview of design thinking including its history and characteristics.
Clarke, R. I. (2020). Design Thinking. ALA Neal-Schuman.
IDEO Design Thinking
A summary of design thinking from IDEO, a design firm famously associated with the design thinking process. Read the following sections from the sidebar: Design Thinking Defined, Journey to Mastery, New Applications, History.
IDEO Design Thinking. IDEO. (n.d.). https://designthinking.ideo.com/.
Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation - CH 2: What is Design Thinking, Really?
Design thinking summarized critically and thoughtfully in relation to its commercial application.
Mootee, Idris. Design Thinking for Strategic Innovation : What They Can't Teach You at Business or Design School, John Wiley & Sons, Incorporated, 2013.
On Design Thinking: A Simultaneously Over-Discussed and Under-Explored Subject
This short article by design strategist Ana Monroe offers a designer’s perspective on design thinking.
Monroe, A. (n.d.). On Design Thinking. anamonroe.com. https://anamonroe.com/design-thinking/.
Natasha Jen: Design Thinking is Bullsh*t
“In her provocative talk, [graphic designer Natasha] Jen lobbies for the ‘Crit’ over the ‘Post-It’ when it comes to moving design forward.”
Jen, N. (2020, April 23). Natasha Jen: Design Thinking Is Bullsh*t. Adobe 99U. https://99u.adobe.com/videos/55967/natasha-jen-design-thinking-is-bullshit.
2. BREAKING DOWN THE MYTHOS
DESIGN THINKING LIMITATIONS + LIABILITIES
Often associated with Silicon Valley, the phrase “design thinking” has started showing up in all kinds of work environments: at non-profits, in the offices of elected officials and municipal institutions, in libraries and classrooms, etc. As it's gained momentum and amassed a diversely populated following, a huge mythos has developed around and convoluted the idea of design thinking that we need to address.
Myth 1: Design thinking is the same thing as thinking like a designer.
Reality: Design thinking and thinking like a designer are different things.
What is the advantage of thinking like a designer? Designers tend to think in a way that we might call non-linear, improvisational, and adaptive. This is especially true compared to lots of professional disciplines in business, the sciences, and the humanities, whose processes are often constrained by disciplinary silos. In this sense what makes design thinking valuable is basically that it can encourage people in these disciplines to "deprogram" from the conventions of whatever industry they studied and/or work in, to make space for novelty, innovativeness, and interdisciplinary collaboration.
So there are advantages to thinking "like a designer," but what does that mean? It depends on who you ask...
Thinking Like a Designer: the Intuitive Definition
To artists, designers, craftspeople, etc., it simply describes their own way of thinking and general creative approach, or the idea of creative thinking in general. This is the platonic ideal of what's meant by design thinking. It isn't a skill, it's an experience, or a point of view acquired by regularly engaging in creative work.
Design Thinking: the Simulated Definition
To those not in creative disciplines, it refers to the package that's used to didactically represent the above. It's a technique, not a frame of reference, and it's not a substitute for natively inhabiting that kind of headspace. You might think of this like the difference between being a tourist somewhere and being a resident of that place.
These two conceptions are bound together by the understanding that creative thinking can contribute to and enrich disciplines that are not expressly creative; but the intuitive version of this idea and the simulated version are not interchangeable, and the simulated model has a major disadvantage we need to keep in mind. The “packaging” of design thinking as a set of well-defined steps is what makes it accessible to students and newcomers, but it's also misleading and problematic. A package of steps suggests a very linear, assembly-line-style process, which totally undermines the premise that using these tools facilitates non-linear, improvisational, and adaptive thought processes.
Myth 2: Design is harmless and low-stakes work.
Reality: Designers intervene in society and culture and are accountable for the effects of those interventions.
Thinking like a designer is not dogmatic, but packaging this abstract idea as a set of didactic steps suggests an "easy as 1, 2, 3," mentality, much like a self-help program. And, much like a self-help program, when the package achieves cult-like status its proponents can start behaving in ways that are, well, cult-like: robotic repetition of "doctrine," tendency to trust more and question less, magic bullet mentalities and savior complexes, etc. etc. There are a lot of advantages to thinking like a designer in non-design work environments and, insofar as design thinking can help facilitate this, it offers some wonderful affordances to groups and individuals wanting to "think outside the box." It's unfortunate and ironic, though, that it's so easy to interpret design thinking as such a boxed-in framework for creative problem-solving, because the application of real-time criticality is the central advantage of design thinking in principle. Without criticality, we're prone to thoughtless errors, and given the design thinking mandate to be "human-centric," these errors can be pretty high-stakes.
Section learning materials
Decolonizing Design
This paper describes the colonial impact of design thinking in humanitarian design projects.
Pinkston, Russel. (2019). Decolonizing Design. https://russpinkston.com/wp-content/uploads/RPinkston_DecolonizingDesign-web.pdf
Image attribution: Balcaitis, R. (2019, June 17). Design Thinking models. Stanford d.school. Empathize IT. https://empathizeit.com/design-thinking-models-stanford-d-school/. "5 steps design thinking model proposed by the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (d.school)”
Myth 4: Design thinking is fundamentally human-centric.
Reality: Mainstream applications of design thinking aren't as human-centric as they could be.
In theory human-centricity should and can be a central tenet of design thinking, but all the conditions described above make this ideal difficult to uphold in mainstream design thinking culture.
Two of the steps in the design thinking process explicitly call for collaboration with users/subjects: empathize and test. Hypothetically, research participants could be engaged during every step of the process, although someone working in the "move fast and break things" paradigm may not have the time or inclination to make ubiquitous user engagement a part of their process. In his introduction to Decolonizing Design, Pinkston observes, "...the commercialization of design practice has often skewed the motivations of the designer...toward one where the designer's ultimate goal is to satisfy his or her own needs, rather than those of the user" (Pinkston 2019); in other words, while human-centricity is the intent, designer-centricity is often the outcome.
Myth 3: Users of design thinking should "move fast and break things."
Reality: This is a socially irresponsible mentality that conflicts with the design thinking mandate to be "human-centric.”
Read the following article by designer Taís Lessa to learn more about this problematic credo.
Section learning materials
About “moving fast and breaking things” — a designer’s perspective
This article examines the history and problematics of the “move fast and break things” mentality pervasive among tech companies in Silicon Valley (and other SV-sympathetic institutions).
Lessa, T. (2020, August 22). About "moving fast and breaking things" - a designer's perspective. Medium. https://uxdesign.cc/about-moving-fast-and-breaking-things-a-designers-perspective-4d3c7c3854a4.
REFERENCES
Clarke, R. I. (2020). Design Thinking. ALA Neal-Schuman.
Morozov, E. (2013). To save everything, click here: smart machines, dumb humans, and the myth of technological perfectionism. Perseus Books.
Pinkston, Russel. (2019). Decolonizing Design. https://russpinkston.com/wp-content/uploads/RPinkston_DecolonizingDesign-web.pdf
Myth 5: Problems can be conclusively defined and solved.
Reality: "Solutions" or interventions to problems often result in the creation of new problems.
Words like “solving” and “solution” are deeply embedded in the semantics of design thinking. But how much of a solution is something if, in order to address a problem, it cultivates new problems? Author and critic of techno-solutionism Evgeny Morozov explains, “Recasting...complex social situations either as neatly defined problems with definite, computable solutions or as transparent and self-evident processes that can be easily optimized...is likely to have unexpected consequences that could eventually cause more damage than the problems they seek to address” (Morozov 2013).
This course will occasionally generalize engagement with or intervention into problems as "problem-solving," but when you encounter this kind of language, know that it is either misguided or being used as shorthand to describe a more complicated relationship between people and problems.
1. WHAT IS DESIGN THINKING?
There isn’t any one, agreed-upon definition of design thinking, but here are some generalizations we can make about it pretty confidently:
-
It’s a phrase that refers to a way of thinking that proposes the application of “designerly” logic to tasks not traditionally considered as relating to design.
-
It’s normally packaged as a process consisting of a sequence of steps. There are multiple interpretations of this process, all of which are generally very similar, but package the steps differently. In this course we’ll be working off the Stanford d.school version of the design thinking process, whose steps are:
-
empathize
-
define
-
ideate
-
prototype
-
test
-
-
Proponents describe it as a process that prioritizes and embodies the following values:
-
human-centric
-
empathetic
-
collaborative/interdisciplinary
-
experimental
-
adaptable/agile
-
disruptive
-
fast-paced
-
cyclical
-
iterative and divergent
-
ambiguous/non-solutionist
-
not bound to realism
-
failure-positive
-
generative
-
problem-immersive
-
engaging with “wicked problems”
-